Recipe:Vegetarian Patties

Vegetarian burger patties

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Recipe by Jennifer Glauche Licence: CC-BY-SA 4.0

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1 can of red beans or ~120g of dry beans

2 red onions or shallot

1-2 cloves of garlic

spices: pepper, salt, paprika

breadcrumbs (have around 500g at hand, amount varies)

1-2 eggs

Some oil with a high smoke point, for example sunflower oil

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Open can of beans and pour it into a vessel. If you cooked dry beans instead, rinse part of the liquid (keep it for making a sauce or soup!). Mash beans with a fork, mash every bean about once only. You don't want to have them too fine, otherwise the texture will get too dense. Cut onions/shallots into fine chunks, add it to the beans. Add garlic as well, use a garlic press if possible.

Add some breadcrumbs, some pepper, salt, paprika and mix. I recommend to taste it at this point. Note that you will need more breadcrumbs after you've added the egg(s).

If you cooked dry beans instead of using a can, make sure the mixture is below 57°C, otherwise the egg(s) will partially cook in the mixture and will not bind it together. The purpose of the egg(s) is to hold the mixture together and have it not break apart while frying. Feel free to try vegan egg replacements.

Add more eggs and more breadcrumbs. Knead it and add more breadcrumbs until it sticks together nicely and does not stick on your fingers. The mixture should still feel moist when you touch it.

To form patties, take a bit of dough, roll it into a ball shape, then press down to a patty. The patties should be approximately 1cm thick. The unheated patties can be kept in the fridge for 1-2 days or frozen for at least 3 month if you're having too many.

Heat up the oil at maximum temperature in a cast iron pan. Make sure the oil is very hot, try to keep it close to the smoking point.

Fry the patties until both sides are brown. Avoid turning them over more than 3 times to avoid risking that they will fall apart. If you are making multiple batches, clean the pan from onions that fell out.